US Grants Home Schooling German Family Political Asylum 1324
A US judge has granted political asylum to a family who said they fled Germany to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Tennessee after German authorities fined them for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes. Mike Connelly, attorney for the Home School Legal Defence Association, argued the case. He says, "Home schoolers in Germany are a particular social group, which is one of the protected grounds under the asylum law. This judge looked at the evidence, he heard their testimony, and he felt that the way Germany is treating home schoolers is wrong. The rights being violated here are basic human rights."
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but to be a state examined teacher does that mean you're required to teach a particular curriculum? I think the point was this family didn't agree with the state's method of teaching and wanted to teach their own content.
Which so long as the students can meet the standard tests(SATs) then I don't see the problem.
Re:Good (Score:1, Interesting)
"albeit potenially socially awkward children."
I was homeschooled, my husband was homeschooled and we know many many people who were homeschooled and I can assure that socially awkward is not nearly the problem people make it out to be. In fact, homeschooled kids tend to be better at socializing with all age groups rather than just their own. I have, however, met some homeschooled kids that were inept and illiterate so it does have to be regulated, but since I've encountered people coming out of the Public school system with the same problem, I think that is a more a generic parenting issue.
It is probably still true that homeschooled kids are crappy spellers...
Re:You can homeschool all you want (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a strong seperation between "Swiss German" and general spoken German, also in culture and acceptence while they have a very strong anti-immigration policy.
Those kids very likely would've been excluded. Don't think the USA is so might attractive to emigrate to, it's not, at least not to a 1st world citizen.
In Europe, the greater part of the yought and population is already watching English TV, reading English books and listening to English music without a learning curve, don't extrapolate or project your own monolinguism :)
Having said that, personally I think they just have the concept it's possible to "home school" in the USA without having another concept of it, hence making them feel the USA would be a sortof safe-haven to do what they want to do.
Re:I do it (Score:2, Interesting)
The other 50% is about learning to socialize (with other children and adults); that includes learning how to deal with bullies, unfair teachers, members of the opposite sex, and fights among friends.
Right. If that were really true, then kids would be better off working. You get all that social interaction which you seem to think is more important than learning and you get paid.
Re:I do it (Score:5, Interesting)
I got most of my education at private schools. I've met some people who were homeschooled and while they may be socially inept, I was far more brainwashed than they were. I can only offer anecdotes, but I believe private schools are a much bigger problem than homeschooling.
I watched a decent documentary about North Korea the other day (called A State of Mind) and my education (except college) is the same as a North Korean. Just replace "The General" with Jesus and "American imperialists" with "liberals/hippies/communists/scientists" and that's how I grew up.
I learned about how evolution is a lie, dinosaurs existed at the same time as man (or were perhaps fossils were planted by the devil), carbon dating can't possibly work, how the Puritans liberated the Indians from savagery, why the government should enforce arranged marriage, anyone who isn't a Christan is a secret devil worshiper, devil worship is everywhere, Mormons and Catholics are devil worshipers. The list seems endless.
I got decent math education out of it, but I've had to totally reacquaint myself with US/world history and literature.
It's ridiculous that such a place is allowed to exist. There needs to be some sort of oversight; many of my classmates may never recover. Most of the parents had no idea just how radical it all was.
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. "Everyone must be educated by State-approved teachers!" Way to sound like a religious nut expounding the One True Way that everything must be done, BumbaCLot.
(I'm an atheist, by the way.)
Re:Good (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as it does not disadvantage them later in their life, I'm not directly against it. Quite honestly, if I was in the US I'd probably do it myself after I've seen the school system. I'd try to get a few parents together with different but meaningful skills and form a school for our kids. Because I could probably teach math, logic and history to some sensible degree, but I wouldn't be so sure about English, geography, art or biology. I'm fairly sure, though, that if you get together with like minded parents that you can offer those skills to your kids, and probably better and with a lot more enthusiasm than the average public school system does.
What I fear is just that a single teacher can not convey all skills necessary, at least past the elementary level.
Re:Christian Activist Judges Make Me Sick (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh please. Your children are not your personal property to shape in your image. You cannot beat them, and you cannot brainwash them. They have rights, too. And everyone else is going to be affected by your retarded parenting decisions down the road, because we're all part of a society and you can't escape that. Well, unless you live in the mountains away from all other humans. If you do that, well, I don't care what you do.
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:5, Interesting)
My parents, who you’d probably call “half-baked religious nuts”, did a perfectly fine job, and I submit my engineering degree as evidence of that. I was homeschooled from pre-K through high school and went from there to a state university.
Re:I do it (Score:4, Interesting)
How do you address the social aspects of school? A valuable part of being in school was learning how to interact with new people, larger groups, and authority respectfully and responsibly. Its unfortunate, but part of being a productive adult is working with difficult strangers or at least working around them.
True. My daughter is a dentist. She has told me that she has a good chance of identifying the home schooled kids by their behavior in her office. They have a sense of unease about them in the office that kids who go to regular schools don't.
(She usually asks children about school while they are in the chair as part of the make-them-feel-comfortable chit-chat.)
Check //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paolini (Score:1, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paolini [wikipedia.org]
Home schooled, graduated HS at 15, 3 published books, 20 million sold. I know close to a half dozen like him thru fencing (foil & epee) - usually 1 or 2 years ahead of peers. Makes you wonder just how screwed up our school systems really are.
Re:You can homeschool all you want (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't matter. If we are living in a holographic simulation, well, that simulation is our reality. We are part of a system - if that system is artifical, and we are artificial, it doesn't matter. We do what we do in the context of our existence, we can do no other.
Even if there is a real human body in a slimy podule somewhere, that body is no use to me anyway as it has atrophied muscles and a nutrition system that is entirely dependent on the machines. The Matrix is a movie, if it happened for real then there would be no break-outs.
Re:Religious Nutjobs (Score:4, Interesting)
Religious freedom allows you to worship, but it does not in my mind give one free license to program children with it. Children are not property. Religious conflict with a secular school is not a valid reason for home-schooling.
Children are not property, but they are a responsibility, and there's a law so old and deep that it isn't explicitly written in law books (that I know of ... IANAL): If you are responsible to provide for something, you control it.
And when you're raising a kid, you are responsible for that child. If it doesn't get fed, you're legally liable. If the child doesn't get disciplined, you could face penalties yourself because you're responsible. If your child doesn't get a quality education, you may not have any judicial penalty, but the blame does fall to you, because if you're responsible for a kid, you control it.
As the kid grows up, he'll take on more responsibilities for himself -- if he reaches the point that he's fully responsible for himself (working to earn his own keep, paying his own bills) then guess what? You may still be his parent, but you are de facto not in control of your child. If he's responsible for himself, he's in control and can make his own choices. He may choose to follow your rules and respect you, but unless he depends on you for something, he can also choose not to.
This is the main reason I am strongly peeved when I hear a government official claiming responsibility for something, saying we, the government, need to fix education, or need to fix healthcare, or to create jobs. If the government is responsible for whether or not I have a job, then the government gains a lot more control over my life -- what type of job is available to me, what type of salary I can expect... if it's unrealistic to think the government can control that, then it's equally unrealistic to think the government can or should be responsible for it. (Maybe if I was unemployed I would feel differently.)
Re:Good (Score:2, Interesting)
My mother never knew beyond high-school math, I was doing basic calculus in jr. high. Many cities have good support groups with classes taught by those knowledgeable in those fields. The best thing is, a parent can give personal attention to a specific need that a public school teacher, with 40+ kids, cannot.
Reasons to Homeschool (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:3, Interesting)
There is more to this. School duty was introduced in the 18th century in several german states, starting out with a required four year education. It was the time of the Enlightenment, and some authorities thought it would be nice if the people got at least a minimal education, like the ability to read and write. But in many villages children were not sent to the schools but instead on the fields to work. So the basic education became a duty, later one expanded to at least 9 years of school and at least a professional education.
And how do you determine if the children get the dutiful education? Germany decided that it recognizes the education as sufficient, if it is performed by an examined teacher.
Re:I do it (Score:1, Interesting)
You’re right. My children switched from home-schooled to public school (at various ages, 7-9th grade range). Teachers noticed how kind, well-mannered and respectful they are. Still getting comments from them on it after a couple years in the public school system. My kids noticed how obscene and crude their ‘new’ school friends are versus their friends from the homeschooling network and mostly prefer to hang out with their ‘old’ friends.
Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but “socialization” does not come naturally by just throwing kids into a large group of peers.
All three of my kids have had totally different reactions switching from homeschooling to public school there is no stereotype that works. Individual personalities flourish different ways in different environments.
But, oddly, all three of my kids have at one time or another said they’d prefer to be homeschooled again (although that won’t be happening). Why? Primarily because the more efficient use of time = more time to spend with friends.
Starting out I was worried about the “socialization” aspect too (because that is what everyone asked about). I’ve since come to realize it (the socialization argument) is a complete and total red-herring.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Secular schools teach children a lot of non-Biblical things besides evolution and geology (if those things even are non-Biblical, I've read the Bible more than once and I don't think they are).
First and foremost, by handing you children off to someone you don't even know, you are teaching your children that you don't care about them and that you are not concerned about their well being. This sets the stage for greater struggles later in life. As we move into adulthood, gaining self-sufficiency will mean severing all bonds to our parents (as dependency was the only remaining bond). The Bible, by contrast, teaches us that parents should love their children, and that children should respect their parents. So yeah, school turns this one on it's head.
Moreover, you are putting your child in and environment where they receive minimal adult attention and are expected to perform. They are taught that their value as a person is dependent on their academic performance, and they are held to a standard that most cannot meet. As a result, many children are told that they are worthless, simply because they are not proficient at math or reading or some other thing. This contradicts the Bible, which teaches that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, that each one of us has something unique to contribute, and that God loves every one of us.
Finally, school teaches objectification. It teaches us that our own value is only in what we can provide for others, and that others are valuable only because of what they can do for us. Students learn to form social hierarchies where they use lies and rumors and gossip to gain advantage over each other. Later, boys learn to lie to girls in order to use them to satisfy sexual urges, while girls learn to submit to that treatment in order to feel valuable. In contrast, the Bible teaches that people have intrinsic value, and that we should not do things out of selfishness or vain conceit, but rather that we should build each other up and take each others burdens while carrying our own loads.
These are fundamental christian values, and a christian parent needs to be directly involved in their child's life in order to teach them. If you have the time to home-school, that is ideal. I think it's also possible to teach good values to a child who is in school, as long as you spend a lot of time with them outside school.
If you've ever attended a school, then you should understand that there are a lot of good reasons you may want to keep your children out of it. I think that those reasons are much more important than trying to enforce some kind of universalized information distribution scheme. Children don't learn much about those subjects in school anyway (they mostly learn about the kinds of things I've discussed above).
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:3, Interesting)
CITATION NEEDED
Sounds about right. You don't think, therefore you don't know, just just love to pontificate your hatred for people who are just like you.
And I'd be willing to pit the average test and education levels of public education vs home school kids.
FYI, I home schooled my kids, my 17 year old is in college and will graduate HS next year with her AA degree, two years ahead of what "Public" schools can offer. I guess she is not getting a proper education.
Re:Really, WTF?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
You're making that up. Or you're repeating things other people have made up. This is a myth that is constantly propagated on slashdot. It's one of those "everyone knows" memes that people just repeat to each other without any actual evidence because it meets their preconceived notions. The slashdotters who have children going through the school system almost invariably describe an incredibly competitive, stressful grind that is far more cutthroat than they remember from their own school days.
LMFAO! I have two kids in elementary school and there is no way their school experience is more competitive than mine was. Instead, it's all platitudes and pats-on-the-back for no good reason. They don't even have detention, they have something called a "green room" where the kids eat lunch instead of the cafeteria if they're bad.
Public schools are a joke; they have been for years and they've only gotten worse. The only reason I'm not home schooling is because my kids begged me to let them keep going to school with their friends. Given secondary considerations in our personal lives that are none of your business, I acquiesced on that. But not for much longer.
Re:I do it (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like to applaud you for presenting a well written, middle-of-the-road argument in favor of homeschooling. It's one of those things where I fear what I hear, because the only people making noise are whack jobs.
I appreciated the GP's post, too, because I was homeschooled K-12 in Florida, where (if I remember correctly) the litmus test for homeschooled kids' progression from year to year is that each one "demonstrates a level of educational progress commensurate with his or her ability." (Shooting from the hip, here; it has been eight years.) This is usually assessed by standardized tests or interviews with certified teachers.
How do you address the social aspects of school? A valuable part of being in school was learning how to interact with new people, larger groups, and authority respectfully and responsibly. Its unfortunate, but part of being a productive adult is working with difficult strangers or at least working around them.
In my family's case, we banded together in an incorporated support group. We started with 7 families and grew to 120 by the time I left for college. It is my understanding that the group is down to 50 families now, but that is because more support groups have started up in the same county. These groups provide a framework for organized sports and field trips, dissemination of information about curriculum, and opportunities for homeschool parents who had specific skills in some area (art, woodworking, acting) to provide lessons for other parents' children. We spent lots of time with other kids: our immediate peers in the same grade, yes, but also kids of a variety of ages. We got along well with one another. Furthermore, we had occasion to interact with other adults, and not just in a teacher/authoritarian role.
We also spent plenty of time interacting with people in the community. We'd go on shopping trips with Mom and learn about commerce. We spent time volunteering at the public library, nursing homes and other such places. We were involved in community theater and clubs like 4-H, so we did have interaction with public and private schooled children, along with kids from outside our own city.
Where was the line for you between, "I'll do this myself" and "Extend/correct/expound/refine what they learned at school"? Of the teachers I know, the best students weren't always the smartest but they were the ones whose parents took an active interest in what they were learning and who added on to that at home. Even the ultra-religious, "Harry Potter is a sin", parents got some respect for actually being aware of what their kids were being exposed to.
For my parents, the main issue was the social environment of public schools. Peer pressure, drugs, adolescent silliness... all that crap. And this is, to be honest, the best thing homeschooling has going for it. From what I see, kids raised at home are much less rebellious towards their parents during adolescence. I don't doubt that I would have gotten a sufficient knowledge education at my local elementary, middle, and high schools. It is the social education that would have been inferior. It is ironic that 'socialization' is usually the first concern that people have for homeschooled students, but it is the one thing that homeschooling may actually do better, on the whole, than public schools.
Your thoughts? I know you don't speak for the entire homeschool community, but might as well draw some of your good ideas off while we've got someone who's done it.
inviolet may not be speaking for all homeschoolers, but I reckon they speak for the majority. The last statement, "I can't believe I used to think homeschooling was a scarey responsibility; today I find it equally scarey to trust my sons' minds to a public edifice", is probably typical of those who were pioneering homeschool parents and are now veterans of the same. Most of them started because they perceived shortcomings in the status quo. Coming out the other side, I think that there are few who have regrets.
Public "education" isn't (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think that there is anything inherently good about public schools you first need to read this essay, then read a book [johntaylorgatto.com] written by a public school teacher of 20 years.
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991
Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.
Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:
The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.
In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.
The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.
The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.
The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.
The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.
Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of
German History covers this (Score:2, Interesting)
"He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."
Adolf Hitler
"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
Adolf Hitler
These two quotes alone are worth getting a child out of public schools and into private, religious, or home schools. It is very bad for the government to have total control of all child education, the freedom to teach your child in the way you think is best is a big part of what keeps the US government in check, they don't own the youth.
Re:Religious Nutjobs (Score:1, Interesting)
Religious criteria can actually be enriching when included with traditional education - read a few biblical verses about Babylon or the Hittites when studying Mesopotamia and get a little perspective on how long religious conflict has existed in the region. Following a path of disciples descended from the apostles might be an interesting activity to parallel to learning about genealogy. One of the common issues for Christians in America is integrating their religion into their daily lives - "living their faith". Part of that may stem from the two being forcibly separated when in school. Integrating it may help alleviate this problem for the children later in life.
Children are not property, but they are not adults either, parents are legally granted the decision making power for their children until they are adults or until the parents prove to be unfit.
I would strongly disagree with mandatory testing - part of the point for many homeschoolers is to teach and emphasize different things. If I decide that elementary number theory should be covered before geometry then the fact that my child can't do geometry that year isn't particularly meaningful. Similarly, if I am big on the classics, a test that checks vocabulary for more recently introduced/popularized words would also not be meaningful. The same applies if I believed that teaching history is best done local to global and so I am teaching what would be sixth grade world geography in eighth grade and state history in sixth. Perhaps I would rather emphasize Chinese history over European in world history, is that fundamentally wrong? In each case the test results would tell us nothing without enforcing the state curricula on the parent and defeating the point of taking the time to homeschool my child as I saw fit.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:2, Interesting)
Big fan of home schooling myself, however the biggest problem with home schooling isn't the quality of education. It is the lack of socialization. Home school kids are massively underdeveloped socially, they miss out on a lot of cues that the rest of the population learned the hard way in social environment.
Just to play devils advocate, the social environment that can be found in some schools can also be deleterious to normal social development. Problems can occur with the extreme example of home schooled children that never leave the home and only socialize with their immediate family, but this doesn't always have to be the case. Steps can be taken to ensure that home schooled children receive some amount of socialization (youth sports, boy/girl scouts, volunteer and charity organizations, etc). Parents just need to make sure their home schooled children actually leave the home on a regular basis.
Counterintuitively, (Score:4, Interesting)
The main advantage for me was social. When I went to college, I was extremely disturbed by the herd mentality exhibited by most of the other students, whose main goal in life was to look macho for their friends. (primarily by getting drunk and taking advantage of females) I certainly felt better equipped to deal with peer-pressure than the average student was. When you have friendships with people in every age bracket, it's way easier to stay grounded than when all of your friends are the same exact age.
I can't say that far right ultra-religious education is a good thing, but the artificially age-segregated traditional school certainly doesn't seem like a lesser evil to me.
Furthermore, I think independent thinking is more encouraged by homeschooling than one might imagine. I had to learn to learn on my own, an extremely valuable skill. Creationist propaganda gave me the discipline of questioning seemingly obvious conclusions. This gave me the mental tools (and the balls) to question the creationist propaganda itself, as well as many other things that I had previously accepted without question.
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently one of them took Germany's final state exam got an A grade. Sounds like he got a better education than most.
Germany just doesn't believe people should have quite the same freedoms we do, thus the asylum.
Bigotry toward homeschooling (Score:5, Interesting)
I take it you went to public school. But despite that exalted education, you weren't able to overcome your own bigotry. Should we hold homeschoolers to a standard that public school cannot meet?
Your comments are highly offensive. You are making snap decisions and claims about homeschoolers and you don't know anything about them, save what you have learned from the hype in the news.
In addition, you instantly think that the solution to your perceived problem is to "outlaw home schooling". You want to see a revolution on your hands, just try it.
I was homeschooled as a child by religious parents. But they believed Franklin's statement that, "When Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter." I only wish more secularists believed that. Instead they want the power of government to enforce their opinions.
Because of the vastly superior education I got in home schooling (which took about 3 hours a day, unlike public school's 7 hours... and they still can't get the kids to pass the tests), I was able to go to college at the age of 14. Being home schooled, I took the GED... and got the highest scores ever in my state. I went on to go to law school (having scored in the 98th percentile on the LSAT to get into law school) at a top ranked school and now I am a practicing attorney.
Now, do you think that I am going to send my kids to public school? Not on your life. And yet you want to outlaw it because the government can't guarantee that there won't be a "religious perspective". Not because I can't guarantee how I will educate my child, but because the government can't. So I'm punished for the government's failings. Is that how you view it? Well, guess what... that, coupled with your ignorant proclamations about homeschooling, makes you a bigot.
As an attorney, part of my practice is dealing with juvenile delinquents. When a juvenile is arrested or put on probation, who is expected to pay the court fees, bail, restitution, etc....? The 13 year-old who isn't allowed to work by law? No. It's the parent. Why? Because in our society we think that parents are responsible for the outcome of their child.
I wonder why that is. Public schooled children spend 7-8 hours every day in school, plus travel time too and from school of maybe another 1/2 hour, plus time the kid spends at home doing homework. And that's if the kid isn't involved in extra-curricular programs, which can take an extra 2 hours every day. The national average for time parents have available to spend with their school-age child is about 4 hours per day. So school gets them for 7-10 hours a day and parents get them for about 4 hours per day. And they want to blame the parents when the child screws up.
Re:I do it (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you address the social aspects of school? A valuable part of being in school was learning how to interact with new people, larger groups, and authority respectfully and responsibly.
In my experience -- and as a "geek" I am sure many people here share it -- is that the social aspects of public school suck in pretty much every way. They teach you to be afraid of being yourself; teach you how to NOT interact with people honestly and straightforwardly; and -- if, like me, you had some bad teachers -- teach you how to DISrespect authority.
Thankfully, I made a conscious decision in the sixth or seventh grade to simply disregard people who didn't like me ("if you don't like me or treat me badly, you are not worth my time"). But most kids can't or won't do that, and many end up much worse off for it.
I do not accept this modern notion that throwing our children to the sharks at a young age is the best way to teach them how to handle sharks as an adult. I find, through experience, that a much more nurturing environment pays off into a more well-adjusted adult later on.
It's not like homeschool kids are sheltered. Overwhelmingly, of them have regular activities with kids and adults of all ages, most of whom are wondeful people, all of whom are flawed people. In fact, homeschool kids often have MORE exposure to broader ranges of people, because they don't spend so many hours a week with the same people, week after week after week. They have more opportunity for diversity in their activities, and often take advantage of that.
I know a lot of homeschool kids, and most of them are some of the nicest and most social kids you'll ever meet, and they are perfectly capable of working with people who are "difficult."
There's the occasional family that completely shelters their kids, but that's an exception. The norm is much, much different.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying that's what you are trying to teach your children, I am saying that's what you are teaching them. I suppose later on when they put you in a nursing home you will understand that they aren't trying to neglect and ignore you, but rather that they are looking out for your own best interests the same way they learned to do it from you.
To a true religious whack-job like myself there is no difference between "ideological and dogmatic" reasons and "pragmatic" reasons. You seem to believe that your life philosophy should be separate from the way go about your day to day life. I submit to you that if that is indeed the case there is no reason at all to have a philosophy.
What it comes down to here is whether or not you support my freedom to practice my religion the way I see fit. Saying that I can believe whatever I want but that I must live the way you say is as contradiction.
You ought to simply come out and say that you don't want me to live as christian, and that you feel that the government should pass laws prohibiting certain aspects of the christian lifestyle which concern you. You ought to say that the government should repeal aspects of the first amendment to allow these kind of bans based on religious grounds. Making a "quality of education" argument, given the state of public education, makes no sense and is disingenuous.
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:4, Interesting)
This is certainly true. My mother is a middle school teacher, and I've volunteered at her (inner-city) school in Alabama. The quality of education fluctuates between average and crappy, and I have no doubt that a reasonably educated, intelligent person (as you probably are, being a Slashdot reader and someone capable of writing coherently, which is all I know about you) can do a better job than the lowest-common-denominator teachers in many schools. Public schooling in the US has a lot of problems, and the foremost of them is that in many cases the children are more intelligent than their teachers and the teachers, having no idea how to handle students who are above average, just do nothing. After all, if you do nothing to help the student above the curve, she'll just get an A and nobody cares that she's not living up to her potential.
The solution here, of course, is to fix the public schools. Universal access to education is too important a social benefit to let it fall by the wayside simply because the schools need work.
It *is* true, though, that a large chunk (probably a majority) of homeschoolers do it for religious reasons, reasons which are detrimental to their children's education. I'm from Alabama. The homeschool movement is very strong in the Deep South, and it's almost all for fundamentalist reasons.
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, it's a good lesson for dealing with a corporate environment.
Also, and this is just my experience, the home-schooled kids I knew were always even more socially incompetent then I. Of course none of them went to a "home schooling group", which I believe is simply called "private catholic school" over here.
Theory versus reality. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can of course only speak to my experience, but let me tell you my social skills suffered dramatically because of being home-schooled. Through those 6 or so years I was frequently lonely and had perhaps one or two friends throughout all my time there, whom I would see once a month when my mom took me to the school's teacher, who would evaluate my work and my education. My parents made some effort to help - I was on a baseball team throughout my time at home, but it was glaringly obvious how immature I was compared to others my age and so I made few friends.
Now, about those visits to the district education office (required in Riverside County at least); I looked forward to these less and less because most of the kids there were worse off than I was; shut-ins who didn't know how to talk, or attention-deprived obnoxious kids, and, call it a stereotype if you will, but there were plenty of crazy "fundie" parents keeping their kids out of the public schools whom I actually met. In one very poignant case I remember, the mom stepped in and refused to allow her son to read "Beowulf" because it contained "demonic ideas."
Of course, not all the parents were like that. But the kids more adapted to the environment would simply get away with not doing their work - usually by copying out of the solutions (we graded our own work - there would be spot-checking by the teacher but it was easy to get away with small inflations of one's grade).
I regret every year I spent in the program. When I got into college I was naieve, socially-shell-shocked and had trouble adapting. Perhaps it just wasn't for me, but in my opinion the majority of kids taken out of the schools learn less about life than necessary.
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:3, Interesting)
On a more serious note... The "lack of socialization" is a myth. One of the reasons that home schooled kids are often described as "wierd" is because their socialization is so much farther ahead of what kids get in public schools. When a five year old strikes up a conversation about current events, or economics with a 10 year old, people see that as "weird".
When I first started looking into the mechanics of home schooling (legal requirements and whatnot), I went to a little "basics of home schooling" talk that a local home school store gave each week. After the meeting, I was talking to the owner of the store, and she started going on about how the public school system wasn't about education. It was a social program to indoctrinate kids into social and political beliefs. At that time, my internal flags started waving declaring the woman a nut job. Several year later, I have found that she was less a nut job, and more in line with the standard beliefs of the population. Given how many people, such as yourself, that believe public school is a social training program, I find it hard to believe that a very large portion of the public schools employees and school boards do not agree with you. Given that, I have to accept that maybe she wasn't a nut job, but that I might have just been nieve in thinking the schools were about "education".
Some things to consider when talking about public school socialization...
Supervision by adults is minimal. If they don't have to get involved, they don't want to. While this would be healthy in 13 year olds who have been properly socialized, it is not healthy in a room full of 8 year olds. When 8 year olds learn 'socialization' from other 8 year olds, their socialization skills get retarded, and they are not capable at 13.
While no rule is absolute, most home schooled kids around here are part of various clubs and other organizations. These groups tend not to be age discriminatory. So, the home schooled kids interact with people of all ages. Were as public school kids interact with a few adults that have to split their time between 20 to 1000 kids, and 20 to 30 other kids that are the exact same age as them. This grouping by age retards their development. I find it particularly ironic that while home schooled kids are regularly exposed to far more variation in environment, and and almost always have more detailed discussions about those situation, they are regularly accused of being sheltered.
I know that I regularly get accused of sheltering my child because I home school, as well as regularly accused of exposing my child to to more things than a child of his age can or should be able to understand. Often by the same person in the same conversation.
Re:No story here (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, religion, being a form of schizophrenia, IS a disease, after all.
Of course those who are ill with it, will by definition fight this to the end. That’s how schizophrenia works. Because accepting that they are wrong, is now nearly hard-wired to their own death, in their brains.
Sure, it’s someone’s choice, if he want to kill himself and his children in a delusion. But the thing is: Those people lost the ability to make choices, related to reality. Because they live in a schizophrenic fantasy world. It’s like saying that because the cat in Alice in Wonderland was evil, all cats should be killed. It. Makes. No. Sense.
My mother used to make such connections that made no sense. According to her, I had specific character traits, because she knew some guy, who “is like” me, and that guy had those character traits. I learned to be very good at logic and at staying in physical reality, to not get infected by the crazy myself.
The worst thing is, that those people are always 100% sure of themselves, and no discussion will ever change that! Ever! Full stop. (= Not without medication.)
In conclusion:
1. They are detached from reality, in a schizophrenic inner fantasy world.
2. Which means, they can’t make decisions related to reality.
3. Which means, they can not make the right choice for their real own interest.
4. Which means, someone has to help them get out of schizophrenia again, before they can be trusted with choices.
Sorry. it’s sad. And it’s very hard to do this the right way. (In the interest of the patient, that is so clouded by schizophrenia.) But it’s how it is, and no ignorance is going to change it.
Also, NO! I do not think they are bad people. Just as much as anyone else with a mental disease is not bad. He just is what he is. A poor guy who had a really seriously bad time, and needs the help of us all.
Yes, I know these things. I have the competence to say this.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I doubt someone who works fulltime is going to be homeschooling. Beyond that, most teachers (particularly at the elementary level) have expertise in educational process/techniques more so than in specific subject matter (though most have some subject matter expertise, but rarely in all - or even most - subjects they teach). Much of this training involves crafting lessons in ways that can be understood and appeal to a broad range of students with different learning styles, needs and capacity. When you have one or two children, whom you know intimately, being a subject matter expert may be much more effective than being an educator. For instance, on a one-on-one basis I know I can teach math and computer science much more effectively than my wife; if I had 30 kids to deal with, perhaps she'd do better simply because she better understands the range of teaching styles and methods available.
My wife is a public school teacher in California - award winning, highly regarded, highly educated, and therefore soon to be unemployed. When we have kids, it may well make great sense to home school, and I wouldn't rule it out.
Re:Second Opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
What your parents taught you to gather from public school is a bit different than what every body else learns. What exactly are you doing to raise your kids so that they don't come to highly critical and sweeping generalizations when they meet my children in the workplace? Is my son bound to be a liar and my daughter a whore, because they did not receive a proper christian homeschooling?
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
I was a candidate for home schooling, but back in the early 80s, it was very harder to do legally and the curricula wasn't there yet, it was in the works.
I spent 1980 to 1984 and 1990-1991 with cancer (ALL) and I had to travel 90 miles each way, three times a week for chemo and blood tests.
My grandmother was educated and a school board president so she looked into it. No joy. So I kept going to the reservation public school, half time, but with full workload, couldn't take time off besides the half days for chemo. In hindsight, I wish I'd been homeschooled, would have made the entire process go easier.
As for your comment about "shelter children from real information", well crap, public and private schools do that too. History, politics, lit and science are pushed in the direction the district and teachers want. As someone who went to a public school/federal school district on a Reservation, I had to attend a year of Lakota Mythology and Tradition. Yep a whole year of religion and beliefs for a tribe I and 1/5th of the students didn't belong to.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do private schools send more kids to college? Why do elite suburbs? You shouldn't really pat yourself on the back for taking bright kids with involved parents and getting them into college. If the majority of homeschoolers are schooled by parents with college degrees (using Wikipedia article here), and the majority of public school kids do not have parents with college degrees. Then it's not really much of an achievement to have higher test scores than public schools is it?
Caveat: I did one year of homeschooling and one of correspondance. I personally do not recommend it.
Re:Good (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
I second inviolet's post.
My wife and I homeschool precisely because we were disgusted with both the quality and the direction of the public school in our district. Before making that decision we attended school board meetings, met with our children's teachers, and had private meetings with both the past and present superintendent. While not too surprised what we found was indifference at just about all levels. Both my wife and I are college grads - I majored in the humanities and my wife in the sciences - and neither of us are religious.
Evolution was too controversial, but letting a community church onto school grounds so they could proselytize and pass out bibles to our kids as they got off the bus and walked into the school building was no big deal. Our children were at the top of their classes, but gifted programming was eschewed for individualized learning plans -- a nice idea except all it meant to the teacher was letting our kids finish their work then tutor the other kids. Classrooms of 25 - 30+ kids in 1st grade were not an issue to be concerned about.
What really surprised us were the supportive phone calls we got from teachers after we pulled our kids out. Teachers know things aren't right, but when their job depends upon keeping their mouth shut during these tough times what's a teacher to do?
Now in our second year of homeschooling things are going great. Science and math are an integral part of our homeschooling, our kids have been exploring another language thanks to some decent support materials on DVD and the web, history is as accurate as we can make it, and we don't have to worry about some other parent complaining that the dictionaries in the library define oral sex [latimes.com]. As for extra curricular activities our kids are involved in at least one sport every season through the YMCA and YWCA (in our area they're merged). They have friends who they occasionally spend the night with and vice versa. Their bright, inquisitive, social and aren't afraid of science and math (ok - I'm a proud parent too ;-).
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Home schooling vs. school duty (Score:2, Interesting)
The U.S. doesn't have a public school system. It has thousands, run at the county level.
In five minutes I can drive from Baltimore City, with horribly failing public schools and a graduation rate of less than 35%, to Baltimore County, with generally adequate schools and one of the highest graduation rates in the nation, to Howard County, one of the richest counties in the U.S., where over 40% of students have participated in Gifted/Talented programs.
But the issue here is not the quality of schools, or the socialization that kids may (or may not) get by going to school. These parents were determined to keep their children ignorant of any information or teaching that conflicted with their religious beliefs. I'd call keeping kids ignorant a form of child abuse; but it's considered perfectly acceptable by many Americans.
Re:Really? (Score:3, Interesting)
The kids I know that went to catholic schools didn't seem to be that extreme. Do they teach evolution at catholic schools?
I saw an interview with a staunch Christian studying evolution at a US university. Basically, he said he believed God created man and evolution was the way he did it.